<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<title>Pleione by hauntedpoem</title>
<style type="text/css">

body { background-color: #ffffff; }
.CI {
text-align:center;
margin-top:0px;
margin-bottom:0px;
padding:0px;
}
.center   {text-align: center;}
.cover    {text-align: center;}
.full     {width: 100%; }
.quarter  {width: 25%; }
.smcap    {font-variant: small-caps;}
.u        {text-decoration: underline;}
.bold     {font-weight: bold;}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/30036375">Pleione</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/hauntedpoem/pseuds/hauntedpoem'>hauntedpoem</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Gaunts, Riddles &amp; sometimes Malfoys [4]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Dragon Pox (Harry Potter), F/M, Forced Bonding, Forced Marriage, Gaunt Family centric, Gaunt- centric, Gothic, Romanticism, Slytherin Heir - Freeform, The Gaunts, dragon pox epidemic</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-03-14</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-04-07</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-16 00:48:21</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Not Rated</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,679</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/30036375</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/hauntedpoem/pseuds/hauntedpoem</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>On how some of the most infamous Gaunts came into existence.<br/>A Marvolo Gaunt/ OFC origins story.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Gaunt - Relationship, Marvolo Gaunt/ Marvolo Gaunt's wife, Marvolo Gaunt/ OFC, Pleione Gaunt/ Marvolo Gaunt</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Gaunts, Riddles &amp; sometimes Malfoys [4]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/2159907</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>3</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Chapter 1</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>As I was writing a Chest of Riddles I had to imagine some background for the characters, especially for Merope. Written here is the contrived story of how she came to be. It's a twisted, dark story.<br/>Much of the inspiration for this fic is owed to the works of Charlotte Bronte and Agatha Christie.<br/>In mythology, Pleione is the name of a nymph that gave birth to the Pleiades, the 7 sisters that are part of the Taurus constellation. Merope is one of the Pleiades so it only made sense to use mythological inspiration here as well.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  
</p><p> </p><p>Dragon Pox was no laughing matter but never before had the Ministry seen an epidemic spread so fast like the one in 1918. It extended like fiendfyre and the village of Muchweeping, a tiny, insignificant wizarding community west of Surrey had been decimated.</p><p>Well… almost.</p><p> Before they managed to contain it, the epidemic wiped out the residents of old magic families. The Stainwrights, the Crawleys and the Tagwoods and other less significant families from the area simply disappeared all victims of Dragon Pox.</p><p>The Ministry took care of the matter quite rapidly and proceeded to quarantine the small village for another month to contain the plague until they were successful in stopping the spread. Muchweeping was practically erased from the map of the wizarding population, some households were burnt to the ground to stop the expansion of the virus and the bodies kept under an aseptic stasis until their incineration and then their official burial. The old, the frail and the untended died first. The rest of them suffered slow, painful deaths that seemed to drag on for weeks.</p><p> Along with them, another branch of the Gaunts met the same fate with one exception - their youngest daughter.</p><p>“There have been as many plagues as wars in the history of magic, yet always plagues and wars take people equally by surprise.” The head of the department of magical epidemiology concluded while a quick quotes quill was scratching in the distance.</p><p> As he got what he needed, the Prophet’s new darling, Caron Skeeter, was ready to wrap it up and flee the cursed village. He really paid no heed to the last Gaunt on these plains, considering the mere mention of a poor, obscure, plain girl quite an insignificant addition to his article. After all, the Ministry would love to use this grim accident or rather incident to further its agenda of extreme regulation regarding the care and breeding of dragons  - filthy, mindless beasts, in his opinion - and dragging this for longer than necessary would only make people weepy and prone to petitioning. For all he knew, this Gaunt girl would become the face of triumph against adversity, prompting the extremists to deny the Minister’s authority. They couldn’t have that, so he scratched away at the mentions about her and turned his back to the desolate-looking village.</p><p>*</p><p>Pleione Gaunt was the sole survivor of the epidemic. Only when she was all but left alone in the world, Pleione deemed it necessary to owl the authorities.</p><p>As a sixteen-year-old that didn’t get out much into the world, she was unable to hold interest for long. Homeschooled, quiet and reserved, Pleione was the embodiment of pureblood resiliency. She cried moderately, not letting her face scrunch up and dabbed at her eyes with a plain handkerchief and above everything else, she kept her mouth shut and did not complain to the established order when they arrived to assess the damage.</p><p>After receiving a clear diagnosis from the healers, they told her she must have had a lucky star somewhere in the sky. Others rationalized her survival as a mere consequence of her youth and sturdy health. Surviving this epidemic was a miracle indeed. Assistant healer Marigold Williams was quite teary-eyed when she deemed the girl to be in acceptable condition. A little pale, a little gaunt but acceptable.</p><p> Marigold was keen to know how this one girl survived the epidemic that wiped out a whole village.</p><p>Pleione had been the only one taking care of her old mother and father all through their sickness. She watched quietly as her father’s skin turned green and blistered until he was unrecognizable. With abnegation, she continued her caretaking routine: feeding, washing and monitoring them. Her sister, Dodone, and her fiancé suffered suffocating, painful deaths, their skin all but scorched by their high body temperatures.</p><p>Stoically, like clockwork, she would get up before dawn and return to her bed after midnight. The whole day was spent tending to the sick.</p><p>“I had no idea what was awaiting me, or what would happen when all this would end. All I knew was that my family was suffering and they needed curing.” The girls answered in that contained voice of hers. She wasn’t loud, she did not smile, and for a minute, her self-effacing qualities drew the healer in.</p><p>Marigold patted her on her back, almost shyly, afraid that somehow, Pleione would break.</p><p>The wizarding authorities tried to right one wrong by searching for her remaining family. They found one such relative in the form of Marvolo Gaunt, a middle-aged pureblood wizard who lived all but forgotten by the world around him, several miles away, in Little Hangleton.</p><p>They met for the first time at the mass funeral officiated by the ministry. It was a perfunctory, formal ceremony to remember the victims of the epidemic.</p><p>The one that apparated with her paternal uncle, Bob Ogden, pushed Pleione in his direction without much thought. She never before met a man more lacking in respect for the womenfolk than Auror Ogden. His hand grabbed her upper arm and she could feel his thick, sausage-like fingers imprinting in her flesh, feeling for her bones. It hurt but she didn’t let it show. She had the impression that voicing her discomfort would please Auror Ogden and she didn't want that.</p><p>*</p><p>Pleione was stony in her welcome. She has just lost everyone and everything she ever knew. She knew that as a minor, she had to subject herself to the laws of their family. What she didn’t know yet was this man and what his laws were.</p><p>It was frowned upon to be too forward with a stranger, after all. She dared catch a glimpse of him at her side. He did not look too pleased with being burdened with his brother’s brood but he didn’t complain either. He looked calculating as if his mind tried to fix a plan to turn all this misery around.</p><p>Then, it hit her that it was obvious Marvolo wasn’t accustomed to caring for anyone else but himself and that would never change. Ever since he could get his half of the inheritance he secluded himself on another Gaunt property set far in an obscure muggle village and he never visited or firecalled. They might be close in blood but they were far away in intentions.</p><p>He was a tall, morose man with a harshly lined face and strong, cruel brows. His hair fell in unruly dark brown waves along his face, his sideburns were neatly accentuating his harsh, hollow cheekbones. Like all the Gaunts, he was betraying a high forehead, now perpetually lined with frown marks.</p><p>He could have passed for tall dark and handsome if he actually was a pleasant man, character-wise. He was not. There was something punishing in the very geometry of his body, in the way his features aligned to form his face. He was not an ugly man but he surely bore deep in his marrow that unspoken potential for cruelty that all Gaunt men carried inside them and thus, he was repugnant.</p><p>Pleione knew quite well that they were lucky to be able to show their face and stand among others of their kind, when they could have very well been cast away and forgotten in one of those secretive disappointment rooms, left to self-destroy as babes, alone and hungry until Thanatos spilt his mercy upon them. Marvolo Gaunt, younger brother to Marvino Gaunt, her father, hid perfectly well his crooked ancestry. The twist of scorn in his upper lip did not.</p><p>A merciless rain was cascading over their dark umbrellas and in a fit of weakness, Pleione almost lost her balance. He was there, in front of her and she grabbed his arm for support. He didn’t flinch, nor did he push her away but she could feel the muscles of his arm unexpectedly harden, wiry steel and sinew.</p><p>He appeared both distant and unpleasant when he was handed Pleione’s belongings by the healers. Only then he spared her a glance, a brief once over and Pleione has never felt more naked and exposed in her life. Her eyes darted from the wand in his right hand up to where he held the umbrella.</p><p>His hand looked perpetually bloodless as it clung to the handle, the dark, sparse hairs only accentuating an untractable physical quality that all men seemed to have when pitted against a woman’s body. She could see the starkness of the white cuff of a shirt encasing that wrist of steel as the black sleeve of his coat succumbed to gravity. He adjusted his hold and then she noticed it, their family’s ring, clinging to his long, strong fingers.</p><p>That’s when she felt compelled to slither her thin arm around his, like she’s found herself a tree, strong enough to carry them both when she was just a vine. The scratchy, woollen fabric of his coat filled her nose with the smell of smoke as if this man bathed in curses. He was, after all, one of them and it wouldn’t do to deny herself this certainty.</p><p>Surreptitiously enough, she pressed a hand to her chest, where she knew the Slytherin Locket hung heavy and cold between her breasts. They would just think she was crumpling with grief, even when she was not.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Chapter 2</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p> </p><p>
  
</p><p>“You are very far from home, now.” These are the first words Marvolo says to her when they are alone in what she presumes to be the Gaunt ancestral home. If it could be called that – a home. It certainly has a very rustic feel to it, bordering on unkempt but since Pleione has lost all property and the Ministry reimbursement for it lies somewhere in her mother’s vault at Gringotts and she cannot touch it until she’s of age, she cannot even be upset.</p><p>It’s clear the place was uninhabited for years and she wonders whether this is Marvolo’s permanent residence. When she asks him, he answers her coldly.</p><p>“It is now.” And she knows that the subject’s closed. Permanently.</p><p>Pleione looked around her and the place was unpleasantly dusty and drafty and anything like the home she once knew. She was to find out much later that her father’s father owned this place and one acre of both land and forest. It was a small and insignificant property compared to what Marvino, her father, accumulated in his lifetime.</p><p>It was also one of the oldest Gaunt properties, something passed by her ancestors to their descendants, it was the house of Marvolo and Marvino’s father and their elusive mother. They never knew her and probably that was for the best. Marvino always dismissed questions about his ancestry and barely even mentioned he had a brother.</p><p>But he had one, Pleione found herself in his care now.</p><p>*</p><p>The subject of her grandmother was closed forever. In this aspect, the two brothers were similar. Where Marvino was deflecting, Marvolo was morose and taciturn.</p><p> All her father’s done seemed to Pleione for the sole purpose of erasing his past. He married Seraphina Blithe, the daughter of a mediocre potioneer and together they moved far and away from everyone that knew of the Gaunts. In Muchweeping, they were the forgettable family that lived comfortably enough to not arouse suspicion about their father’s capacity to make a living. Marvino was dealing in potion ingredients and Pleione suspected it was the activity in their house that started the whole pandemic. Those dragon heartstrings her father chopped, boiled, dried or preserved might not have been first grade, after all. Underhanded dealings with Czech Vampires and Northern Hags were bound to take their toll on the family’s apparent good name and fortune. Miraculously enough, Marvino kept the family out of debt and even managed to secure a very successful marriage for his oldest, Dodone.</p><p>Now, everything she knew had been erased.</p><p>“Make yourself comfortable.” He said as he directed her luggage upstairs and disappeared.</p><p>What Pleione did not know when she first landed here was that Little Hangleton was a very muggle village. She was wary of going out during the day. What was there to be seen in a muggle village, after all? She could not perform magic outside her lessons and she didn’t even have time to talk to Marvolo about her future or whether her lessons would continue. She occupied one of the rooms upstairs and tried arranging what little possessions she brought with her into its confines. A narrow bed and old furniture, a couple of dreary paintings of the countryside, a handful of musty books, a ragged and discoloured carpet. It was depressing, it was nothing like her bright and airy room with a personal bathroom. She spent the day cleaning and wiping dust so she could at least deposit her clothes into the closet, she walked around the property but never dared to step foot into the woods. It was late at night when she decided to wait for Marvolo down in the kitchen, reading one of her books by the candlelight. She fell asleep and the candle extinguished itself but Marvolo didn’t show up.</p><p>*</p><p>In between abandoning her with little food and no money and coming late into the night and locking himself in the other bedroom, Marvolo rarely interacted with her. On a sunny enough day when she decided that she exercised enough wand movements from her Charms manual, Pleione decided to be brave and walk North along the narrow winding road until she reached the house on the hill. It was a tall and imposing building with white walls and a sprawling garden and for many miles, these seemed to be their only neighbours. And they were muggles. Somehow, they seemed to be living more civilized lives than she did at the Gaunt shack.</p><p>When she returned, she was surprised to find him at the table, drinking straight from a bottle. His dark eyes raked her figure and Pleione felt… dirty. Alone in her room, she would pace until she decided to go to sleep.</p><p>*</p><p>Her seventeenth birthday came and went. It was already the dead of winter and she was determined to ask Marvolo to take her to Gringotts so she could get into the possession of her inheritance. The moment she would step out of the fireplace and into a shop in Diagon, would probably be the last time she would see her morose uncle, she thought but fate had different plans for her. When she caught up with him that morning, his face was inscrutable, his coldness impenetrable and his hand on hers was forceful and subduing.</p><p>“And where do you think you’re going?” He asked, and his brows knitted together in anger. “You’re not leaving anywhere.”</p><p>And for many years, she wouldn't.</p><p>*</p><p>Later, she would find out that the pact he forced on her a disguised marriage bond, obsolete in structure and demands. For many months, Pleione could not easily fall asleep for fear that he would barge into her room and collect upon his rights. Later, she was to find that her uncle was not like a starved wolf that pounced on his prey but like the spider, quietly bidding his time, lulling her into a false sense of security, slowly provoking her into letting her guard down.</p><p>He wasn’t that horrible a man, she told herself. He brought her books and charms and dresses. She was allowed to use her wand but no magic that she wielded could be pitted against the wards that he activated on the day of their so-called wedding.</p><p>“It’s for your own safety, think of the muggles.” He said but somehow, she doubted that being stuck in the old Gaunt shack was intended for her benefit. He’d tricked her and took pleasure in it. He came by more often, never forcing his presence on her, letting her get accustomed to him. He was civil, enough for a jailer. One night he came to her door and asked her to open it. He’d come to collect and he’d take everything away from her.  </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Muchweeping is my twist of Muchdeeping, a fictitious village featured in one of Christie's works, the Pale Horse.<br/>The Plague, by Camus was also an inspiration, albeit a brief one, and if you paid attention, the Dragon Pox epidemic takes place the same year as the Spanish Flu, 1918.<br/>Jane Eyre, both the novel and the many adaptations fed my imagination as well. If you are familiar with her work, you will understand that Jane Eyre is not a love story. To me, it is borderline horror, as it happens to be the case of many gothic, romanticist works. I have always imagined Pleione as Jane as portrayed by Charlotte Gainsbourg in the 1996 adaptation. Marvolo Gaunt is, with great adjustments, the image of a 2006 Rochester, though. When I find the time, I will conjure some more imagery to support this fic. :)</p></blockquote></div></div>
</body>
</html>